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Older Broncos rue missing out on postseason chances

"I've been through some
tough seasons, but this is
probably the worst just
because every time you
don't make the playoffs
now it makes it that much
harder to get where you
want to go." - Champ Bailey, Broncos cornerback (Getty Images file photo)

There is football pain in losing, with the bruised egos, shattered confidence and battered reputations.

The suffering comes from those who know one inescapable fact tucked away in a lost NFL season.

As Champ Bailey put it: "The clock's always ticking. You're only in this game for so long, and every time you miss the playoffs is another time you're not going to win the Super Bowl. And as a player, individual things are fine, but the goal is to win that tournament, and I'm still trying to play in my first one."

This troubled season for the Broncos has been trying for a rookie such as quarterback Tim Tebow, who waits for an opportunity, or a second-year linebacker such as Robert Ayers, who said, "I want to win every time I step on the field."

But the biggest impact of the current state of the Broncos — at 3-10 — can be felt by the likes of Bailey, safety Brian Dawkins and nose tackle Jamal Williams. In a league in which the average career isn't even four years, they are 30-somethings who have played for at least a decade.

Bailey will set a record for cornerbacks if his peers name him to his 10th Pro Bowl in the coming days. This will be the fifth consecutive season he and the Broncos have missed the playoffs. He's still waiting to play in his first Super Bowl.

"That's very tough when you look at it," linebacker Mario Haggan said. "I mean, I've been in this league eight years now, and that's what the world considers the back end. And every game, every play, everything is special. I've never been to the playoffs, you know? I want to know the feeling."

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Dawkins, now in his 15th season, has missed the past two games with a sprained knee and figures to sit out another Sunday against Oakland. He went to one Super Bowl in his time with the Philadelphia Eagles but has never won the title game.

Williams is in his 13th season and still waits to play in a Super Bowl.

Safety Renaldo Hill, now in his 10th season, has played in only one playoff game — in 2008 with the Dolphins. Miami lost to Baltimore in the wild-card round that season.

"It's so hard," Hill said. "I probably didn't think about it as much when I was younger. I knew I wanted to go out and play hard every week and wanted to do the right things, but once you start getting up there in years, you know how hard it really is to get into the playoffs.

"You don't know when it will come back around, because each year is a different year. It's one of those things, maybe, if you experience it early in your career, you really want to experience again and really fight to get back. But we don't have that, and it's really disappointing."

With Josh McDaniels having been fired as Denver's coach and the fact that he had final say in the team's personnel matters, change is on the horizon in the Broncos' locker room. The team he assembled figures to acquire plenty of new faces in the coming weeks and months.

Some players won't be asked back, some will. And some such as Bailey, who will be an unrestricted free agent at season's end, will face a choice of where to play in an effort to get on that path toward a championship ring.

"I've been through some tough seasons, but this is probably the worst, just because every time you don't make the playoffs now it makes it that much harder to get where you want to go," Bailey said.

"Champ's had an awesome career," Haggan said. "One day you're going to look back on it and say he's a Hall of Famer and we're going to say we played on the same team as he did. You see a guy like that not have an opportunity to play in a Super Bowl yet, it makes you think.

"You play for yourself, but also for guys like Champ, like Brian Dawkins. You want to be the guy who helps them get an opportunity to win a Super Bowl. So it's tough to be where we are right now."

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